Besties should be able to watch Keeping up with the Kardashians with you and not judge you, but instead, immediately be able to make fun of Kourtney’s voice.

Besties should get super excited about your new jobs and opportunities and support you 100%. They should read your articles and congratulate your promotions.

Besties should let you know when you’re acting like a jerk, but never hold it against you. After they tell you, they should stick with you while you cry your eyes out and then pick yourself up. Also, they should show up at your work the night after your breakdown with your favorite Starbucks drink to cheer you up and remind you that you’re not a bad person, you’re just still learning and that’s okay.

Besties should always tell you look hot in that dress, but you’ll look even hotter in the one that doesn’t make you look like a bison.

Besties should politely pretend you’re not weirdly obsessed with Harry Potter and love you anyway.

Oh how true those are. I can’t even begin to tell you how true they are in me and Christie’s case, but I will try.

(daphne and velma 4ever!)

If Christie and I’s lives were a movie, tonight we would dress in designer duds and wear ridiculously high heels and go out on the town and get free drinks from everyone and take millions of pictures and karaoke together and then get offered a record deal and win a car and fly off into the sunset. However, while this gameplan would not bother me in the slightest, today I wish I was just sitting on our couch with her, watching Kourtney and Kim Take New York for the millionth time, painting our toenails and talking about what Jesus is teaching us and how much we love puppies. That honestly sounds like perfection right about now.

With my friendship with Christie, everything has been so easy. We met freshman year of college but didn’t really get to know each other until the week before sophomore year began. One of those nights, out in the wilderness with no cell phone service on a retreat, we had both heard a message that hit us kinda hard. We ended up talking outside and walking down to the river at a certain campsite. Sitting on a big rock, dangling our feet over the water, we told our life stories and instantly bonded. We stayed out so long that people came looking for us – but that was the thing with our friendship- time never seemed to matter. From then on, we were lucky if we ever left anywhere once we started talking.

Marathon-long conversations in the morning were our calling card. We’d say “let’s do something today!” and then we’d start talking and would spend so long conversing that we would end up pushing all our plans back to late afternoon. Our personalities were alike enough that we could relate, but different enough that we could teach each other. Christie’s friendship in my life has been one that has found us laughing until we cry more often then not and talking til the sun comes up. Plus, we borrow each other’s clothes and trust each other with hair dye, and as girls, that’s a pretty big freakin’ deal.

Christie is one of the few people I know that is able to be both absolutely crazy and silly and playful and then super-serious and contemplative with me 5 minutes later. We can go from talking about The Bachelor to theology in no time, and neither one of us finds it to be an odd transition. It’s like even our brains are best friends.

Our friendship has been rooted in our love for Jesus from the start. In our apartment, we always seem to walk into each others’ rooms with our bibles open, wanting to ask about scripture, encouraging each other in prayer and telling so many stories that cement the fact that God has a sense of humor. Christie constantly makes me evaluate my faith, makes me act on what I believe and is there with tissues when life just doesn’t make sense. Her advice comes from talking to God about things and her heart is strong for Jesus and furthering his name.

The best of friends make you a better person, and for Christie, this is overwhelmingly true. Most of all, Christie has brought out my confidence way more than I thought possible with music. She’s been writing music since she was a kid, basically, and she was the first person that I felt like I could share my own songs with. Her voice is the kind that when she sings, people stop dead in their tracks and listen and her songs are heartfelt and I was a fan of her music even before we were close friends, but to have her sing and play and write music with me? Amazing. Without Christie I would have stuck to playing my ukulele alone in my dorm room, never shared hand-written lyrics with the world, never picked up a guitar, and never played a show. She is the Chuck to my Olive, the soprano to my alto, the shaker to my drum, the guitar to my ukulele and the melody to my harmony. She made music an even bigger part of my life, if that was even possible, and am a better songwriter and a better person because of her.

We’ve been roommates for nearly 2 years, but at times it feels more like 20. She knows me, I know her and we just have that almost-ridiculous dynamic where we finish each other’s sentences. I’m gonna miss when we don’t live together, but I can’t wait to see what our futures hold. I am so grateful for her in my life and am celebrating today from afar!

I love you, bestie! I hope your day is as wonderful as you are, although, that’s an especially tall order. Here’s to 22+ more years of mischief and dance parties and dreaming big.

If you want to leave a little birthday love for CZ, feel free to write a sweet comment here or go check out her fantastic NEW photography blog, Cold River Photography and leave some love! You won’t be disappointment!